YES, the word "exclusion" starts with the prefix "ex-" which can, I will admit, be modified to become "sex-" and sex, as you may be aware, is hilarious. It is a guaranteed laugh, because everyone is so awkward about it! So you can always always always tap into that awkwardness for Laffs A Plenty. Obviously, xkcd does this very often. That's why it is so funny!

So what could be funnier than taking something not usually about sex - the Pauli exclusion principle - and making it be all about sex? It is perfect. It fulfills the XKCD Paradox Of Nerdiness - being about science, so it is nerdy, but being about basic high school science, so everyone can feel good about themselves for getting the joke. Heck, even I get the joke and I basically know nothing about chemistry.

God, seriously though, how lame was this joke? Don't we all talk about the concept of being "sexiled" when a roommate is having sex, forcing one to sleep elsewhere? I assume I am not the only one who has heard this word. "Sexiled" is a far funnier word than "Sexclusion" - for one thing, being kicked out of your room because of Sexy Times inside is much closer to being "exiled" than to being "excluded" - after all, how many people actually want to be included in the sex? Basically none, right? I mean, no one is like "Ugh, my roommate is having sex and excluding me from it" they are more like "ugh, my roommate has driven me into EXILE." Also, the word just sounds smoother - following the "ex" sound immediately with a hard C is much more awkward than following it with a long I. That just flows nicer. What I'm trying to say is that this comic is a pale shadow of a joke that everyone already knows and uses.

Not that that will stop Randall from making more jokes like these. That's why I want to help him out. Each of the following words has had the word "sex" cleverly added into it. Each one could be the subject of its own great comic, or even, if you work real hard, a 5 part series.

New comic: Don't you love how in randall's mind,everything he says blows everyone's minds. I don't think the idea that the value we put into objects make them more important than the sum of their parts is a new or profound idea. Also, the last row of panels and the alt text don't really add anything new or different to the idea set out in the first row. Though the last panel reminded me of a DJ Shadow song, which is much better than anything that xkcd has put together.

I thought today's XKCD was... sort of okay. I'm amenable to the idea that patterns are more than just their parts, and that organ donation is good. So it presents ideas that I'm sympathetic to. It doesn't present them well, but even so, I'm less inclined to be hateful.

I think most high school chemistry classes would discuss why alkali metals get along so well with halogens, why carbon only has four numbers in its circle, why the noble gases keep to themselves, and why hydrogen is such a slut. At the very least, the Pauli exclusion principle should come up when discussing the periodic table of the elements.

I'm not entirely sure I get the new comic, though. Does she want to become a train instead of a house? Did she previously feel that she would be less dead if she weren't parted out?

"Upon completion of detailed character timelines for three of the most well known geek movies (Asperger syndrome), the author realized that a humorous punch-line was necessary in order to publish these charts as a comic strip."

I liked the new comic. And I think two beat panels was the right number to convey how it's striking her.

I'm kind of surprised at a comic so overtly pro-naturalism, but that's more because even the most SHOCKING! media tends to either tread lightly around the subject and pander to whoever was slighted at every turn (or else be so heavy-handed in either direction as to be obnoxious even to people who agree with the premise). Which is part of why I like the comic.

What pisses me off are the people on the xkcd forums who seem to believe there's a cosmic difference between marking a box with a checkmark or with an X.

so who wants to bet that xkcd fanatics are going to be all over the "in popular culture" section of the "Ship of Theseus" article in Wikipedia now?

Also, since the pieces are still fundamentally the same, the house is still "in the bin". They are both correct, but I still get the impression that male stickfigure is being a bit of a douche towards her (probably because she can actually make things with lego and he can't :P)

Embarrassingly, I didn't understand 659 until xkcdexplained explained it to me. I thought she had gone to change the adult's driver's license as revenge for making her think, or something. Some kind of indication as to where she was in the bottom half of the comic would have been nice.

I think I've seen Sexhibition as a name of a porn movie.Also, the new one? Does not really comprehend. Is the joke here that humans don't exist, so they're all organs, so she's agreeing to donate her organs, as in... wait... that's actually kinda amusing. Definitely more than an XKCD chuckle. Not very good, but definitely okay.

I'm sort of torn on the new comic. The huge speech about the lego bricks is cumbersome, heavyhanded and pretty obnoxious, ESPECIALLY delivered to a kid. It terribly, terribly reeks of geeky superiority complex. But the overall conclusion and cause of the comic is pretty good. I think, in a way, it's quite poignant, and I think it works far better if you don't take it as a "joke". Maybe I'm too sensitive towards the subject of organ donations, and I don't know how it's seen in the US, but I'm quite partial towards things that raise awareness to it in a thoughtful manner.

Overall, I think the comic would be FAR better if, instead of dumping a lecture by some arrogant, obnoxious fella, Randally presented a discussion between two kids whether the house is in the box or not, with the latter argument prevailing.

Pauli Exclusion Principle is High School chemistry, yes. They obviously do not go into the quantum physics of why this happens, but I'm sure I had to do some good deal of electronic distribution.

So, the new xkcd is not meant to be funny, it seems. I think it's for good that this will probably drive many "GOOMH" fans to become organ donors, but enough about the moral values of this instance. I do think it has a beat panel more than it needed, and xkcd's usual "simplistic" art makes it difficult to realize if that talk on the top panels was done minutes or year before what happens on the bottom row. Also: why does she carry Lego pieces with her all the time? The same message could be conveyed with a thought bubble.

All in all, I'm not SEXempt of agreeing this is a good comic, though. I think when Randall is not trying to be funny he actually does a good job.

The trouble with the latest comic that it comes off like the guy put the organ donor card over on the table and then gave a heavyhanded metaphorical speech and probably looked meaningfully back at the table afterward. Although just now I'm realizing that she's probably supposed to be remembering the first row of panels - when the only way to show someone aging is to make them taller, it's very easy for it to look like the camera's zoomed in and they fill more of the panel. IAW Fernie that it should have been a conversation between two kids.

As disappointing as XKCD has been, this one was sextraordinary. I interpreted the last panel as Douchey McDouche being anti-organdonation (take it with you) but after his his sexplanation, she realizes his hypocracy and makes him an organ donor. Just imagine if hes right and he has to spend eternity hunting up his organs and sexcising them from the living. HA HA! Good times for all. I can see the other side where for the first time, she sees organs as a sextraneous sextravagance after death and decides to do the "right thing" and become an organ donor. Is this RanDull sextolling a virtue of the ultimate charity? Don't worry, he'll make up one with Megan providing Roman charity (how's that for an obscure allusion? Fell free to use it in a future strip RanDULL) Either way, a very deep comic which shows that when a little sextra thought is put into it, RanDULL can still make a decent comic.

counterpoint: though I do like the dry humour of xkcdexplained, their post for this comic did not contain the word "SEX-wife!". It is also by nature lacking in the fiery vitriol I have come to sexpect from xkcdsucks.

guys, the only reason that I read xkcd is because the sites that mock it are so much fun!

This joke also fails on a scientific level. In the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the electrons do not share orbitals unless there is no more room at the same energy level. As someone who was one of two people on my dorm floor one night and the other was right next to me, I can tell you that romantic pairings do not share a similar arrangement.

I can't believe everybody has passed on the most obvious one yet: sexkcd.

Anyway I disagree with the comic in many ways but it being a "ridiculously bad pun about science" is not one of them, since science is one of the four 'pillars' of xkcd (although I guess so is romance but he manages to consistantly screw that up).

re: the last comic: why the guy is imparting such "wisdom" to a kid playing with lego makes no sense to me.

--"In the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the electrons do not share orbitals unless there is no more room at the same energy level."

Is that not the Aufbau Principle? IIRC, the Pauli exclusion principle merely states that the wave functions of fermions are antisymmetric, i.e. that fermions are space-filling; it doesn't say anything in particular about the order in which orbitals are filled, only that they DO have to be filled at some point.

Thanks for this blog. I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels that Randal comes across as a conceited, preachy, condescending asshole. Not only that, but his cartoons are about as funny as cancer. I'd rather read For Better Or For Worse.

@dragon, yeah he must be trying to cover his ass after that whole "I'M COMPARING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBERS PORTRAYED BY THE NEWS MEDIA TO HOW I WOULD LIKE TO GET MYSELF AND DAUGHTERS EVERYWHERE DRUNK SO I CAN RAPE THEM"

I'm sorry, but I might have to abandon this site for xkcdexplained.com. Not only do they repost all the comics large enough for me to read them (thus sparing me the hassle of clicking through and granting me the spiteful joy of denying Randall hits), but they coldly refer to Randall only as "the author".

Anon 9:20, you are a self-important, pseudo-intellectual fuckwit excuse for a troll. You lack the conviction or fire to be truly inflamatory while simultaneously lacking anything substantive enoguh to even spark debate you vacuous, non-contributing zero.

"@dragon, yeah he must be trying to cover his ass after that whole 'I'M COMPARING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBERS PORTRAYED BY THE NEWS MEDIA TO HOW I WOULD LIKE TO GET MYSELF AND DAUGHTERS EVERYWHERE DRUNK SO I CAN RAPE THEM'"

Not completely. He got me to go to xkcdexplained and find this, which is funnier than the comic itself;

The author read about the Pauli exclusion principle on Wikipedia and quickly realized that the word "exclusion" could be combined with the word "sex" to create a new word: "sexclusion." This was the comedic spark he needed in order to create another scientific-concept-transposed-into-real-life cartoon.

Dragon, I was referring to comic 558 "1000 Times" where he says that "the difference between a million and a billion is the difference between me having a sip of wine and 30 seconds with your daughter and a bottle of gin and a night with her"...

Maybe he's not technically covering anything up, but considering the implications of that, that's pretty fucked up wouldn't you say

Are there people who don't check the organ donor box for non-religious reasons?

I'd never really though that people just secularly dismissed it, or had any axiological objection to it.

I'd hesitate to be judgemental, but this comic sort of gives off a "I am a philosopher and you are a plebian" vibe, which is especially annoying because of the rudimentary nature of the philosophy in question.

Come to think of it, philosophers would be members of the plebs, wouldn't they? Something to think about, at least.

Dear carl, Get a life. If you feel it necessary to write four paragraphs every day or two on how something sucks you probably should just kill yourself. How anyone could live and be that negative is beyond me. End your misery.Owen

Aw, it's so cute how the XKCD fanboys love it so much they're willing to casually tell people they don't even know to kill themselves! I love how caring and concerned they are that they don't even pay any thought to how callous and insensitive suicide jokes are--so consumed are they by their wild emotions of rage that someone dare dislike their comic.

I was not telling him to kill himself because he doesn't Like xkcd I don't give two shits what any of you think I was telling him to kill himself because I don't understand how any one would be so negative that they have to find an outlet and talk about how something sucks analytically and want to keep on living

listen your not understanding what he was saying he talking about negativity and how if your fine and you want to be NEGATIVE all the time you arn't a person who anyone wants to be around other than miserable people. have fun in all your negativity and and misery ASSHOLES

I actually wonder what was his reason to change the alt text, whether it was fear of being "offensive", or if he thought the original text sucked. But then, if it was the latter case, he should have went ahead and replaced the whole comic.

I like it when the cuddlefish go crazy like that. At least Owen gave himself a name, which deserves kudos. But then, how come an xkcd fan, who is SO enlightened and smart, think that a guy like Carl can possibly NOT be a pleasant person just because he reserves some minutes of his week to develop his criticism to a webcomic? ... I guess it's because xkcd fans just love every single move Randall does, so they can't imagine being turned off by anything. Dunno, just a hypothesis.

Captcha: Skeow. That's exactly what it sounds like when my cat plays ska.

Hey you know what ? I just learned about this site, and I just couldn't believe. Oh my god. I mean, do you have any friends, or family, apart from your fellow xkcd haters ? 'Cause you obviously don't have anything to do all day long except shitting upon a webcomic, describing bit per bit why YOU think it isn't fun. Well, guess what : persuading people you are absolutely incapable of getting the humor of almost each and every comic from Mr. Munroe, even the rare times when it is done with sensible arguments, in the end, make you nothing else but idiot. And I'm not afraid of making long sentences to express it.

Have fun with that, give me a lil' touch of your condescending humor, which seem to find so much funny compared to xkcd's.

PS:Yes, I am aware that now that I've said that, you're not going to do condescending humor, just to look annoying. Or maybe you are, because I just said that. Oh, dammit, this non-ending !

Your grammar and spelling is not very good so maybe you should pay more attention to your teacher as this makes you a hypocrite*.I know you're trying though so I'll give you an A for effort. Well done! :)

Manutaust:Aaahahahahaa. I love you so much, your post made me laugh a lot."Hey you know what?" is never the way to begin."I just learned about this site". Wow, you are very behind."and I just couldn't believe." It helps when you finish sentences."...do you have any friend, or family, apart from your fellow xkcd haters ?" I actually have a mother and a dog, but I can't speak for everyone else. Also, we're not haters. Also, question marks don't come after a space."'Cause you obviously don't have anything to do all day long..." You think this takes up all of our time?"describing bit by bit why YOU think it isn't fun." Mate, it's the internet. We have opinions here. We don't say that we're right. Well, Carl does but he's the boss so..."...make you nothing else but idiot." Confucius say: "He is idiot.""And I'm not afraid of making long sentences to express it" It'd be even better if your sentences were good ones. Didn't you ever get taught not to start sentences with "and"?

Write better than that in french, Dan, and then tell me one more time my grammar sucks.

Condescending is a latin-derived adjective meaning "acting with a patronizing descent, often showing superiority". Now, tell me THAT doesn't fit the tone of your and Anon's comments. You can take off that primitively-capsed "UN" from your PS.

Hey, did you know what? I think that this site is the most pathetic thing that ever was. Ongelooflijke why that why you would mash a webcomic when you would do not better yourself. I would be ashamed to have you in my village. You are tiny child! I think perhaps you people have no lives at all!

Hehe, "you must have no friends because you dislike something on the internet." That one's my favorite. It's got just the right level of moronic extrapolation without going into the tasteless category of "you should just kill yourself if you don't like XKCD."

It's some pretty excellent extrapolation! "You dislike a comic and have a sarcastic sense of humor. THEREFORE, you have no friends!" The best part, the BEST part, is how you have to build in an exception for "apart from other xkcd sucks people" in order to make it even remotely fly. Still not that feasible though. And btw most of my friends are XKCD fans. It is nice because I get to feel superior to them.

Apparently, it wasn't obvious that I was imitating Carl's brilliant humoristic style, which, as you summed up, looks like "you should just kill yourself if sou like xkcd, and I'll tell you why : because I don't".

And yeah, it's not obvious because you really suck at imitating styles of humor. Probably because you don't understand them! Because you're barely literate. Please learn the language before attempting to speak it.

--"You english speakers definitely know so much more than anyone else in languages."

Native English speakers are generally better at English, yeah.

Look, I'm a FAN of xkcd and I'm STILL annoyed by the cuddlefish. There are plenty of opportunities to criticize this site that don't involve making the arguments Carl's made it clear he doesn't care about.

Let's not digress over english speakers then. All right. Start on a new base, with actual arguments. Okay. First : why devote so much time and energy to criticize somebody else's work ? Carl's not even trying to point out anything trully bad about xkcd, he's just saying that he doesn't like its humor, meaning randall's. Right, so what ? And I'm not even speaking of how, in 90% of the times, Carl's just doing it with nothing else than insults, self-references ("Meme machine, just a meme machine" might he think), and unintersting photoshoppings of Randall's works. And it's pointless even when it has pseudo-arguments, because I think, in most cases, you just can't tell why something isn't funny. You just feel it, some others don't. Plus, sometimes, some hypocrite talks about how, from his divine humoristic heights, Carl almighty, in great goodness, deigned to recognize some humor in poor Mr. Munroe's comic. That is quite ridiculous, considering Munroe is obviously high above Carl. All this makes Carl a very annoying and hatable person.

To answer your first question: nobody is spending a great deal of time or energy on this. Carl is probably the laziest among us all. The rest of your questions are based on similarly flawed assumptions so I'm really not going to waste my time on them. Esp. as you are a complete idiot.

That doesn't mean anything. Unless "If you think I do not speak -the- french, how do you think I have missteps not that Google doesn't not wrong ? I have the idiolect idiot and you have the idiosyncrasies idiots" means anythingin english.

I'm an intermittent reader of xkcd because it lost its edge a bit and in my opinion no longer merits following it regularly. I found it on Tuesday because I was skimming through the recent comics, checked out the forum a bit and saw someone bashing it. Since it was a slow day, I decided at the very worst it was good for some cheap laughs.

Instead, I found salient points explaining what seem to me to be legitimate criticisms of Mr. Munroe's comic. These criticisms were perhaps not particularly well organized, but it's a blog and you have to accept some limitations of the medium. The disorganization isn't anything that basic reading comprehension and the willingness to actually read the comics couldn't solve, so I don't mind it.

Of course, my opinion of the critics here rose the next day, when Mr. Munroe posted the example of mediocrity that is the subject of this post. It's not an original thought, the pun makes me groan (and I usually like bad puns), and the execution left me cold. It came off like the comic was written by the person destined for the couch, and the alt-text seemed like him fantasizing.

Fortunately, I was able to find cheap laughs anyway, in the form of xkcd fans who come over here. It's seriously downright hilarious that they don't see that every criticism they make can at the very least be said about them, and more, as this site pretends to be nothing other than what it is. Of course, their points are weak anyway.

To illustrate this, I'll end on one of the "criticisms" leveled at this site...

All you Cuddlefish, you're all OUTSIDE THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC!!!1!1

(Of course, as this site has a much smaller target demographic, specifically those who have become disenfranchised with xkcd, it's actually true, unlike when they say it, as xkcd's target demographic is much larger and almost by definition includes anybody who would actually criticize it in detail).

What I find most ironic of the basis of all arguments is that they all lead back to "Why don't you let it be?" We are, you're not.

People like Manutaust, anonymous haters, and others, the reason why none of your arguments work is because this site is not malicious. We don't flame and spam the XKCD topics. We don't send Randall letter-bombs. Hell, the most real thing this blog has done to Randall was write him a book. It was even in good taste!

So tell me, what's worse, a site that minds it's own business operating in it's own domain, or you, a person who comes to our site, makes badly constructed arguments, tells us to kill ourselves and leaves?

Long story short, we're not the haters. You on the other hand, are. So until you find a point that hasn't been repeated dozens of times, you can get the hell off this blog.

(P.S. I understand the nature of your criticism, it's just that you don't know what you're criticizing. It's not that you dislike the criticism, it's that you can't handle the thought that something that you like possibly sucks. Put simply, if this site were Dregorkraken sucks, you wouldn't give a hoot in hell.)

That was easy. I never defended myself from criticizing this site, because as you said, I obviously do. But M. Munroe, since the appearance of this site, almost never alluded to xkcdsucks. He continued writing his comic (whether you like them or not), remained silent about what was going on her.

On the other hand, you, I mean Carl here, kept on criticizing xkcd, and even attended the book launching party. If that doesn't look like stalking ... See, I don't think good words help in any way : Carl doesn't construct anything by just shitting upon xkcd. He just destroys things. And this is what makes this site irrelevant from its beginning.

And as for the PS, yes, I feel more concerned, because I like xkcd a lot, but I objectively reckon this site isn't full of good intentions and intelligence. If this was Dregorkakensucks, I probably wouldn't care a lot, although I'd for sure say to myself "Wow, that's annoying, the guy here just hitting another site." But I'm pretty sure there would also be concerned dregorkaken fans to come to this site so you can have your little private meme about them. I don't hate memes in general, but the cuddlefish is particularly untasty, and the way Carl always present himself as a meme machine (between other qualities) is also a significant part of why his statements are unsignificant to me.

You know what else looks like stalking by your definition? Here, let me make a list.

-being a critic of anything. You even go to advance screenings just so you can write about whether you liked something or not! -writing a fan site. Hunting down every bit of information you can find about someone, compiling bits of trivia about them--that's just a step away from a dossier!-being a regular on an artist's forums. You have a whole community devoted to intelligence gathering about that artist!-being a fan of an artist's work, whether or not you ever communicate with them. You are sitting there reading things that they produced, learning things about them--personal things! And they don't know about you, and they certainly don't care about your existence. The feeling is not mutual.

But people like throwing that word around casually, as if 'stalking' is something that you can just casually do. Its casual use regarding things like Facebook is probably at least partially to do with it. Somehow it's come into the heads of people that 'stalking' just means 'caring about/talking about something (especially if that something is a famous person.'

That is not stalking. Stalking is harassment. Stalking is sending threatening emails and creepy letters. Stalking is the sort of thing that makes a person in fear for their safety and the safety of their friends. Stalking is a criminal offense and jeopardizes the health of the victim, both psychological and, in some cases, physical.

We are writing snarky reviews of a webcomic, and someone who was in the area attended an event that was open to the public hosted by Randall Munroe.

If you honestly can't tell the difference, you should probably seek help. You are a danger to yourself and others.

man: I have decided you are a troll. Because you make too many dumb mistakes to actually mean what you claim: Mr. R. Munroe has not been silent about this site in the least, and I did not attend the book release party.

Then who's asked the question about cartoon vaginas ? Excuse me if I'm wrong, but at least someone from this site did.

Again, this is why I dislike your ways and manners more and more : you just can't find anything more to say insults and irrevocable truths. This is enough to make somebody unlikeable. I don't like you. You probably don't care, and there's no discussion about it; so, that being said, I propose we end this argument here.

Hey, you're right! Someone from this site went to the book release party. How you came to the conclusion that it was Carl in particular that went is quite beyond me, as it was made very clear in this blog who exactly went. Methinks someone isn't doing their research before attempting to make an argument?

How you could learn that someone from this site went to the xkcd book party, but think that the person who did, aloria - a four foot tall tiny little gnome of a girl (no offense) - was me - a seven foot tall 98 year old man - I truly cannot fathom. Perhaps you could explain.

I just ran randomly into the article by browsing this site, and quickly read it. There was a paragraph that said "Then, I asked the question 'Are you going to show some respect to your female readers at last ?'" or something like that (to which Randall answered "I tried, but they kicked me out of their TGIF parties" ), and assuming you were the guru of the site (which I had sufficient clues to think was true), I quickly linked to you Carl.

Reading comprehension needs work. At the very beginning of the blog post: "Here it is! ==>Aloria's<== HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU HAVE MISSED THIS??? thrilling tale of being at the NYC party for the xkcd book. All your questions are answered....below!"

See, the discussion was almost decent until you spoke. Yes, I apparently missed it. It wasn't all big and flashy, and as I said, I quickly read through the article, stopping most notably at the Youtube videos.

also, the end said "A thousands thanks to Aloria for doing all this." You can understand why it might be frustrating to argue about this with you, if you make your points after only a cursory glance at the post you are critiquing.

Anonymous/Sam/Person 1: stop astroturfing for your crummy blog. The first time you posted about it, it was obvious that it was your own blog, but who cared? The tenth time? It allowed me to come out and say, without guilt: nothing on xkcdexplained was remotely well-written or funny. Go away.

Fuck, are people abusing the word 'astroturf' now? THAT IS NOT WHAT ASTROTURFING IS.

Manutard: You should really learn to read. Like, seriously. Errors that you make when speaking a foreign language are your fault. You can't just expect people to accommodate your stupidity. You can't just make stupid assumptions based on your complete inability to read basic words and phrases and then act like they were somehow completely reasonable. You fucked up.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.